Archive for July, 2011
Excerpted from: MAURITIUS BUSINESS GROWTH SCHEME by Henri E. Stetter
“Information overload” is one of the biggest irritations in modern life. There are e-mails to answer, virtual friends to pester, YouTube videos to watch and, back in the physical world, meetings to attend, papers to shuffle and spouses to appease. A survey by Reuters once found that two-thirds of managers believe that the data deluge has made their jobs less satisfying or hurt their personal relationships. One-third thinks that it has damaged their health. Another survey suggests that most managers think most of the information they receive is useless.
Commentators have coined a profusion of phrases to describe the anxiety and anomie caused by too much information: “data asphyxiation” (William van Winkle), “data smog” (David Shenk), “information fatigue syndrome” (David Lewis), “cognitive overload” (Eric Schmidt) and “time famine” (Leslie Perlow). Johann Hari, a British journalist, notes that there is a good reason why “wired” means both “connected to the internet” and “high, frantic, unable to concentrate”.
They raise three big worries. First, information overload can make people feel anxious and powerless: scientists have discovered that multitaskers produce more stress hormones. Second, overload can reduce creativity. Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School has spent more than a decade studying the work habits of 238 people, collecting a total of 12,000 diary entries between them. She finds that focus and creativity are connected. People are more likely to be creative if they are allowed to focus on something for some time without interruptions. If constantly interrupted or forced to attend meetings, they are less likely to be creative. Third, overload can also make workers less productive. David Meyer, of the University of Michigan, has shown that people who complete certain tasks in parallel take much longer and make many more errors than people who complete the same tasks in sequence.
Why the addiction?
Some do so because it makes them feel important; others because they may be addicted to the “dopamine squirt” they get from receiving messages, as Edward Hallowell and John Ratey, two academics, have argued.
Encouraging Changes:
Most companies are better at giving employees access to the information superhighway than at teaching them how to drive. This is starting to change. Management consultants have spotted an opportunity. Derek Dean and Caroline Webb of McKinsey urge businesses to embrace three principles to deal with data overload: find time to focus, filter out noise and forget about work when you can. Business leaders are chipping in. David Novak of Yum! Brands urges people to ask themselves whether what they are doing is constructive or a mere “activity”. John Doerr, a venture capitalist, urges people to focus on a narrow range of objectives and filter out everything else. Cristobal Conde of SunGard, an IT firm, preserves “thinking time” in his schedule when he cannot be disturbed. This might sound like common sense. But common sense is rare amid the cacophony of corporate life.
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I’m sharing some of Mr Stetter’s well-stated article because what he has to say is extremely relevant to our discussions on listening. By now we’re sure it’s not possible to listen and do much of anything else that requires enough brainpower to pay attention. Yes, I can put on lipstick and listen to the news on the radio, but not drive sanely at the same time, or comprehend much of the news. I write my blog posts in silence, total silence, in an office away from anything else. I attend early morning yoga that prepares me to handle the day with calm energy.
All that said, my stomach tightens when I check emails in the morning and realize there are so many that I’ll either have to ignore some or carve out more time than I’d like to address each one. Or my ever-evolving ‘”to-do” list lies fallow.
What are your experiences with overload as described by Mr Stetter, and what do you do against its ravages?
More Research Findings
I continue to search the world for interesting research being conducted. Of course, there is much more than I find; nevertheless I enjoy sharing with you some of the tidbits. You can make of it what you will. I’m forever looking for clues about how we communicate, especially as it pertains to listening. You might extrapolate different learning for yourself.
Share any good stuff you come across.
Humor stimulates brain activity:
“Although our study looked at the brain’s response to jokes, our reasons for doing that were very serious. One of the main questions that families of severely brain injured patients ask us is can they still experience emotions? With the brain imaging technique we’ve developed here, we can answer that question in a simple and painless way.”
The study and resulting paper, published in the prestigious Journal of Neuroscience www.jneurosci.org/content/31/26/9665.full, finds that the “reward” area of the brain lights up to a much greater degree when a joke is told compared to that of simply listening to regular conversation.
Adrian Owen at The University of Western Ontario’s Centre for Brain and Mind
Six functions of nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communication is thought to comprise six functions in human communication. These functions consist of complementing verbal messages, substituting for verbal messages, accenting verbal messages, contradicting verbal messages, repeating verbal messages, and regulating verbal messages.
Leathers, D. (1997). (3rd. ed.) Successful Nonverbal Communication: Principles and Applications.
The influence of facial characteristics on communication
Researchers have found that facial characteristics may compel one to desire communication interaction with another. The introduction and management of interpersonal relationships often rely on nonverbal communication. Facial characteristics of a significant other are used as a template for evaluating new people. Anderson, Reznik and Manzella (1996) found the emotions and character attributed to a significant other can be transferred to a new acquaintance based on the similarity of facial characteristics. When a facial similarity to someone already liked is recognized, those good feelings are transferred to that new person. We are more likely then to approach and to desire acceptance by the new person. Facial features also elicit negative feelings if the significant other being compared evokes negative feelings. Many times these comparisons happen at an unconscious level and are manifested at the conscious level by the willingness to approach a new person. Concurring with other researchers, Palmer and Simmons (1995) suggest to conduct successful interpersonal relationships the ability to interpret nonverbal cues is needed, because social constraints often hinder explicit verbal messages.
It has been consistently found, however, that adult women are better than men at decoding nonverbal communication (Hall, 1984). Research indicates a woman`s superior ability in decoding for a variety of nonverbal cues regardless of the age or sex of the sender. What remain are the indeterminate causes for this gender discrepancy in decoding ability. One suggestion for a causal factor is cross-culturally, nurturance is fostered in girls and care giving is their expected gender role rather than boys.
Research has shown girls display more nurturance communication behavior than boys and this would account for a higher sensitivity to nonverbal cues (Bullis, & Horn, 1995). It has also been suggested that the greater interpersonal sensitivity may be due to disadvantaged status. The disadvantage creates a greater motive for women to accurately interpret nonverbal cues. If there were high motivation for the receiver to decode the message properly, then they would be more likely to attend to all communication cues, verbal and nonverbal. It would also indicate women should have higher skills in verbal decoding ability, but this has not been shown.
Laurel J. Dunn, Department of Psychology, Missouri Western State University
Neurobics: Aerobics for Your Brain
Books, videos, free-standing buildings, devices, you name it, there’s now an entire industry built around keeping brains fit. There’s also a plethora of books on the brain, many written by authors who usually write for graduate students or scholarly journals. An example is David Eagleman, a neuroscientist who’s also a best selling author, most recently of Incognito. When I put the book on hold today at the Boulder Public Library, I became number eighteen on the list.
One of Eagleman’s premises in this book is that not all brains are created equal:
Brains are shaped by genes. And they change over time; they can be cultivated by education and experience, or ravaged by abuse or disease. It’s usually obvious whose body is stronger or weaker: that’s why heavyweight boxers don’t fight lightweights. Neural inequality, however, has not been as obvious.
I’ve written similarly about listening. Listening is a habit formed over a lifetime, and some of us do it better than others. In both cases, there’s a belief that we can improve as listeners as well as thinkers. That is, if we have education, tools and time to practice.
Thus Neurobics. Some of the most popular activities are:
- Wii and similar computer games that call for physical dexterity, quick thinking, competition, and strategizing
- Yoga, tai chi, meditation and others that combine mind, body, spirit that help the brain focus
- Puzzles that require pattern recognition, memory recall and perseverance
- Reading and writing to retain sense of continuity, stay abreast of personal and current events, be able to understand and apply concepts, practice self-expression
I am positive that the more we demand of our brains, the better listeners we will be. It only stands to reason that when we are alert, focused and relaxed, there are fewer interferences to stand in the way of hearing all that is available to us.
What do you do to cultivate your brain?
More than One Way to “Get to Carnegie Hall”
Many of us know the old saw about the person walking in New York who stops someone to ask, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” She is told, “Practice, practice, practice.”
In my June 7, 2011 blog post I concluded with:
I’m often asked if there’s a process to make real change, not just cosmetic upgrades, but lasting and significant change. From what I’ve read, researched and observed, there does seem to be a process. It is:
test, practice, reflect, modify, practice
Why test first?
The simplest answer is, it’s least expensive to test at the draft or prototype stage. We know that software developers test and test early on to get bugs out and to determine market acceptance. It is quite similar for organizational change.
Suppose you were the head of a company and you concluded that Sales and Marketing should be merged into one department called Customer Interface. Maybe that would work, but without testing it on the stakeholders: current department employees, customers, vendors, other department heads, etc. you’d most likely just build resistance without truly understanding the merit of the idea.
Setting up and conducting a test early in the process increases the likelihood that glitches will be discovered before they become too costly to handle.
Practice what?
Let’s say the test has shown there’s sufficient interest in merging Sales and Marketing. What most commonly happens then in a change initiative is “full steam ahead.” Such all out efforts are still too big for a change initiative. What might be better is to practice it on a small piece of the business to see what it will look like in real time.
Reflect for how long?
Change requires constant reflection on what is, is not working. I find that groups in change spend more time talking about what they agree upon than the sticking points. That’s a waste of time and resources. Instead, there needs to be dialogue on what and how to modify.
How little can we modify?
By this time in the change process all eyes should be focused on tweaks, or the remaining bugs. In our example, everyone will understand and stand behind the change to the Customer Interface department, will have clear roles and responsibilities, and customers will be on board. There still might be a few pieces left to modify: e.g. business cards and wording on org chart revised, report templates, frequency of sales calls… details, but nothing structural.
Is this our last practice?
Change is an on-going and iterative process, so there is never an end. Instead this cycle continues, but with fewer alterations. The Customer Interface department will not have to be renamed, re-populated, or re-policy-ed. It will have to be monitored, but all aspects of a dynamic organization require on-going scrutiny to keep it moving forward.
When George Land wrote his seminal book, Grow or Die, he wasn’t advocating getting bigger; he was saying, “keep inventing.”
Even such a venerable institution as Carnegie Hall changes constantly in order to be able to host many kinds of talents, events and audiences.